This is a perfect guide for any beginner to the world of email marketing. It can often be super confusing when you are new to email marketing and you may not be aware of how to go about things. This article is great as it talks about the various factors that can make email marketing campaigns a true success. I agree with every single point that has been mentioned above. I especially agree with personalizing emails as this can totally grab the attention of any reader. Thanks for this post!
The takeaway here is that if you are to use personalization as an email strategy, do so in a meaningful way. It takes little knowledge or relationship to place someone’s name in your greeting. It shows far greater care to send personalized email that is specific to a recipient’s needs and history. Again, an example from my inbox, this email from Rdio dispenses with the formalities and simply provides an update on music I actually listen to.
When you share your opinions, avoid dipping into politics, religion, sexuality, and other topics where many people have almost fundamentalist views. If, however, you know that most of your audience shares your opinion on a topic that’s important to them, you can instantly seem more trustworthy by pointing it out because people trust people who are similar to them.
When it comes to deciding how to craft that perfect subject line, there appears to be really only one area to avoid: the subject line of 60 to 70 characters. Marketers refer to this as the “dead zone” of subject length. According to research by Adestra, which tracked over 900 million emails for its report, there is no increase in either open rate or clickthroughs at this 60-to-70 character length of subject line.
Use your real email signature: Just like using a real reply-to email address, you want to use real contact information within the email and the best way to do that is to include your contact details in the email signature. Giving your readers the opportunity to contact you or connect with you online is a great way to be personal and build a relationship with them.
From a business perspective, emails are widely used as a cost-effective as well as efficient way of acquiring new customers, boosting sales, building up your brand awareness and fostering a sense of trust among your customers. Email marketing has also shown a better ROI compared to other marketing channels. According to a survey conducted by Direct Marketing Association and Demand Metric, email had an ROI of nearly 122%, whereas other channels such as social media had just 28%.

I appreciate you sharing this great article! If you’re still sending mass emails without updating your email marketing strategies, you'd noticed that results are disappointing, despite your efforts in updating your mailing lists and creating emails. If you aren’t getting clicks, most likely you’ve been wasting your time. However, these tips are game changers, I bet these would help a lot. A must read!

A significant element of email marketing is relationship. Does a recipient trust you? Does a recipient even know who you are? When an email jumps the gun by forcing familiarity too soon, the personalization comes across as skeevy. Intimacy is earned in real life, and it would appear to be the same way with email. Take this example from my inbox; no one has called me lowercase kevan l lee in years.

I’ve always been a mailchimp user myself, and I have to say I really like their UI but I’m always open to new options. I’ve dabbled in a couple of the other email marketing providers like Pure360 – but find them so clunky and annoying to use (despite them looking really pretty and having great templates) that I always end up going back to good old mailchimp. I haven’t used GetResponse yet, I’ll give their free trial a shot :)
If you want to code your own emails, you have the freedom to do so. But this is an advanced skill that requires a good bit of technical know-how. Here’s what you need to take the coding leap—whether you’re just getting started, wondering about the basics of HTML emails, or looking for a guide to coding them. We’ve also rounded up a few more resources you might need as you become a certifiable email pro. If you're considering another platform, check out our comparison guide before you make any decisions.
Effective email marketing campaigns are designed for all devices on which users can read their emails -- desktop, tablet, and smartphone. Email campaigns that are designed for mobile devices are especially important -- a quality known as "responsive design." In fact, 73% of companies today prioritize mobile device optimization when creating email marketing campaigns.
For example, I can safely share that I listen to a lot of music, and I’m almost fanatic about sound quality. I might listen to an album with poor sound quality once, but I probably won’t go back to it. And to be clear, 95%+ of new recorded music has what I consider poor sound quality (due to an absurd standard of perceived loudness, which takes away natural dynamic range from the sound). That said, I’m not a hi-fidelity sound geek. I’m perfectly happy with my high-end studio monitors—I don’t buy $1,000 power cables, $5,000 CD-players, or $20,000 loudspeakers capable of playing back sounds too high for dogs to hear.
Great flexibility: Email marketing can work for every business. It doesn’t matter whether you sell houses, lingerie, or consulting; you can get lots of sales if you use the right email marketing strategy in the right place. And you can promote practically anything relating to your business—you aren’t limited to sending links to your sales pages. Or rather, if your emails are just links to sales pages, you’re doing it wrong.

On a more basic level, AI improves email marketing mechanics such as A/B testing and smarter audience segmentation. This can have immediate benefits in terms of optimizing your marketing strategies for different customers and sending the right content to the right people. On a more advanced note, AI can actually optimize email content for specific audiences and product campaigns. Additionally, it can help with personalizing email content right down to the individual customer level, depending on how much information you can feed it from your CRM and sales systems. AI delivers strong capabilities, which means determining exactly how a potential email marketing service has implemented AI should be key criteria for most marketers before purchasing.

I think this email also makes quite a brilliant use of responsive design. The colors are bright, and it's not too hard to scroll and click -- notice the CTAs are large enough for me to hit with my thumbs. Also, the mobile email actually has features that make sense for recipients who are on their mobile device. Check out the CTA at the bottom of the email, for example: The "Open Stitcher Radio" button prompts the app to open on your phone.
Paste your e-blast into the body of the email blast software. You should write your email blast in another software application that checks for spelling or grammar errors. Once your text is ready, you can paste it into the body for your email blast. Take note of formatting, spacing, and links because some of these don't transfer over correctly from one software to another.
Constant Contact is a fairly experienced email marketing tool, with nearly 20 years experience in the industry. Customers can take advantage of professional (and mobile optimised) email templates, various customisation options, easy set up and engagement-driving action blocks. This software also includes list building tools, automated welcome emails, contact list segmentation, and email tracking.
Mailjet is an all-in-one email marketing solution used for sending, tracking and delivering marketing and transactional emails. Some highlight features include its intuitive email editor (e.g. drag-and-drop and ready-to-use newsletter templates), personalisation, smart market segmentation, contact management, as well as a free plug-and-play email API.
Prefer to build your emails from scratch? Use Marketing Campaigns to develop new and unique email template designs for use with any of your Single Sends or automation emails. Whether you’re adding columns, changing fonts and colors or managing imagery, Marketing Campaigns makes it easy to ensure your email designs reflect your brand and provide a consistent experience for your users. Whether you prefer visual, drag-and-drop editing, HTML or a unique blend of both, learn about how our editing experience has you covered.
Well, charity: water took an alternate route. Once someone donates to a charity: water project, her money takes a long journey. Most charities don't tell you about that journey at all -- charity: water uses automated emails to show donors how their money is making an impact over time. With the project timeline and accompanying table, you don't even really need to read the email -- you know immediately where you are in the whole process so you can move onto other things in your inbox.

This email template is direct and perfectly designed to promote events. Unusually, the brand name comes on the bottom, with the headline focusing solely on the event itself. Yet the principle remains true.The header gives you the opportunity to outline the event. For example, if it’s a business networking event then the font should be professional, supplemented with a sensible image. Alternatively, for a music concert, you can be more creative.For such a simple theme, it’s a versatile option for a variety of events.Good for:

Great flexibility: Email marketing can work for every business. It doesn’t matter whether you sell houses, lingerie, or consulting; you can get lots of sales if you use the right email marketing strategy in the right place. And you can promote practically anything relating to your business—you aren’t limited to sending links to your sales pages. Or rather, if your emails are just links to sales pages, you’re doing it wrong.
Minimal risk: Some top marketers expect to burn through $10,000 of advertising budget before even knowing if they can make a campaign profitable. (Nope, that’s not an exaggeration. But I’d usually aim for a few hundred dollars—not thousands.) With email marketing, the costs are much, much lower. A simple email marketing software like AWeber is very affordable even if your business isn’t a huge success, yet. And even if you go with something advanced like Infusionsoft, you’re still far away from the kinds of investments many other marketing tactics require. Sure, email marketing and advertising aren’t directly comparable (advertising is mainly used to reach new prospects). But you get the point.
Send yourself a test email. Before sending an email to a list of people, send one to yourself. Read over the email carefully and keep an eye out for poor formatting or incorrectly sized pictures. Check the email in multiple browsers and use different devices to see if it works across different platforms. Click all the links within the email and make sure they are working as intended.
The most advanced email marketing services offer custom workflows where you can specify triggers based on actions (such as opening an email or making a purchase) or on inaction (such as ignoring emails). With these services, you can also set up a series of emails (such as tutorials) to be sent to segments of users, and you can pause or stop a campaign at any time. You can also move contacts into new segments once they have completed tutorials.